The Canadian company Colt Canada plans to sign a contract for the supply of 100,000 new assault rifles for the Ukrainian army.

In January, Colt Canada representatives held a “fact-finding meeting” with government officials in Ukraine.

According to Alex Payne, manager of Colt Canada, this is only the beginning of a process that can last up to two years, because Ukraine must determine what type of weapons it needs and where it is best to get them.

Payne noted that Colt Canada hopes to hold a demonstration of weapons in Ukraine in the summer.

As noted, in December the Government of Canada amended the rules of exports, allowing the sale of weapons and small arms to Ukraine.

Citing intelligence sources, the representative of Donetsk, Eduard Basurin, has stated that British instructors have arrived in the Donbass, at the locations of the Ukrainian Forces.

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“In the area of 93rd separate mechanized brigade in the vicinity of the city of Volnovaha, a group of foreign instructors has arrived – led by a representative of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, for the purpose of training of Ukrainian servicemen on how to carry out sabotage and subversive activities,” said Basurin.

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“In addition to the British, from February 5th to the 9th, a delegation of the US military will join the Brits. They will assess the expenditure of funds that Washington has allocated to the army.”

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The DPR stressed that rotation of the Ukrainian military has been completed in the Mariupol district. The marines which came to replace the infantry brigade have participated in the NATO exercises in Georgia in September 2017.

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“It is possible that the commander of the 36th Marine Brigade will give an order in the near future to carry out provocative actions and practice the skills gained” said Basurin.

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Experts admit that the arrival of foreign instructors directly to the region may indicate possible plans for the escalation of the situation. The director of the Center for Strategic Studies, Ivan Konovalov stated that “the essence of what is happening is that the training of servicemen of the Armed Forces and soldiers of the National Guard was so far, carried out in zones away from the so-called ATO. And now they decided to change the format and conduct training in conditions that are close to combat. We can assume that they will conduct local combat operations of a sabotage character, to check the preparedness of their men. ” said Konovalov.

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The same opinion is held by the vice-president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, Vladimir Anokhin, who believes that Kiev is planning a major offensive operation in the region.

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“There are a number of factors that can be used to judge that Ukraine is preparing for large-scale hostilities – possibly late February or early March. This may well be related to the elections in Russia, ” the expert said.

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Note that the UK launched a training program for the Ukrainian military under the name “Orbital” in February 2015. Then it sent 75 military doctors to the country, who provide medical help on the ground. In July 2017 Orbital was extended until 2018. During this time, about 6 thousand Ukrainian soldiers were trained in its framework.

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In addition to Britain, Canadian specialists who come to the country within the framework of NATO’s Unifer mission are also training Ukrainian soldiers. In March last year it was reported that 200 instructors had arrived from Canada.The US has recently spent $ 22 million to equip a military training center near Lviv, to accommodate the new training programme.

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Overall, there are currently an estimated 900 foreign instructors and foreign mercenaries in the Ukraine.

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“We know of about 129 instructors from the United States, Canada, Turkey, Algeria, Lithuania, Latvia, Britain, who coordinate the actions of the Ukrainian units,” said Basurin.

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In addition to the above, about 500 people are part of the Georgian National Legion and the Hungarian Battalion Magyar. He also noted that there are about 200 people belonging to international private military companies.

Canadian instructors have arrived in Lviv to begin training Ukrainian soldiers to “use force”, a course built on NATO principles.

“We conduct training that specializes in the use of force. The course includes a range of skills; how to carry out an arrest, how to use force proportionally and legally.” – said Canadian coach Matthew Hung.

Seventy one years ago the most violent military conflict of the 20th century, the Second World War ended in victory over Nazi Germany. Unprecedented levels of destruction, barbarism, industrial scale ethnic cleansing, and a myriad of other atrocities took millions of innocent lives. The Soviet Union paid the most terrible price with over 20 million civilian and military personnel dead.

The genocidal plans of the Nazi leaders and their collaborators scarred the lives of millions more. Literary every family in what is now the former Soviet Union lost loved ones, or had been impacted by the war. That is the reason why the Victory Day celebration is one of the most important days in the calendar for nearly all immigrant communities from the former Soviet Union. Victory Day is a very personal day for tens of thousands of residents of Toronto, war veterans, their families. It is a celebration and remembrance of sacrifice and heroism.

Last year’s Victory Day event organized by grassroots volunteer veterans organization took place at Earl Bales park in the north end of Toronto. Several thousand people, many holding portraits of their parents and grandparents, marched through the park to underscore the unity of all people from different generations, waves of immigration, countries of origin, religions and political backgrounds in their respect and gratitude for the sacrifice of the veterans.

This year the Victory Day celebration might not have happened at all – if bureaucrats in the City of Toronto had their way. Officials at City of Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation did everything in their power to exclude organizers from Earl Bales Park, to prevent the community from honouring the sacrifice of their loved ones.

A dizzying array of unreasonable, ever-changing restrictions, and obstacles had been placed in order to discourage the organizers and the community. Firstly, the bureaucrats denied the request to have a small parade of veterans and family members in one of the park’s roadways. Next they’ve tried to shuffle the event as far away from people’s eyes into a remote parking lot, that looks more like construction site than a place where veterans should be honoured. They placed restrictions on the use of washrooms and other park facilities, tried to deny space for an art exhibition, and demanded that a garbage collection company be contracted one day before deadline. City of Toronto officials forced the organizers to rent, at their expense, the amphitheatre in the park regardless that organizers had no use for it. The amphitheatre is not wheelchair accessible and could not possibly be used by veterans, many of who are wheelchair bound and are approaching their centenary.

Next was the demand to erect a stage, also not needed. Building permits, crowd control plans, etc. Park officials did everything in their power to drown organizers in paperwork in order to satisfy constantly changing demands. Catering, signs, banners, all of the literature to be distributed or sold at the event had to be pre-approved by Parks officials. Even though the event is not political in nature City bureaucrats had effectively barred political organizations sympathetic to the cause from participating in the event. Organizers worked ceaselessly to satisfy the ever-changing whims of the bureaucrats. It took a month of negotiations, scores of meetings and the involvement of City Councillor James Pasternak for the City bureaucrats to finally allow veterans, but not members of general public, to march through the Park.

Yet as soon as one set of obstacles would be overcome, the bureaucrats would slap another set of restrictions turning the process into a never-ending nightmare with an ever-more uncertain outcome. On the day of signing the permit, a little more than a day before the event, Lindsay Peterson a manager for Parks North York District had demanded from organizers to provide porta-potties, contrary to previous agreement negotiated with the help of Ward 20 city councillor James Pasternak. Surely she was aware that such a requirement would be impossible to satisfy in few remaining hours before her office closes for the weekend. When that had failed she had questioned the authority of representative to sign for the permit. Mrs. Peterson demanded, that the president of organization, a 88 year old veteran who doesn’t speak English, be summoned into her office to sign for the permit. It’s a miracle and testament to perseverance of volunteers at veterans group were finally issued a permit for the event.

The treatment the organizers received underscores the level of hostility of Toronto City Hall and other level of Canadian Government towards Russian and other communities from the former Soviet Union. The ideologically based harassment, bordering on ethnic discrimination is something the community had to deal with for years. Yet the treatment organizers, who wished nothing more but to provide the community with opportunity to honour the sacrifices of their relatives, veterans and loved ones, got from City officials this year is definitely a new low by any standards. Not only does this macabre show exposes the strength of in City’s own Human Rights and Anti-Harassment/Discrimination Policy, but also showcases true value of Mayor John Tory’s commitment to running an inclusive city administration, open to all the communities and their concerns.

Over 350,000 children were taken and used by Canadian and religious authorities. Many were murdered.

More than 50,000 First Nation indigenous children disappeared and were murdered in Church of England and Catholic boarding schools, and 300,000 children (some of whom were United States citizens) were sold or were incarcerated in mental hospitals in Quebec to make money from the Canadian government.

From RTDuplessis Orphans (S3E8)
December 13, 2015

A special edition of In the Now: A story of an atrocity against children, a cover-up, and the sheer strength of survivors. One Canadian “Duplessis Orphan” shares what she had to go through in her childhood.

Illusion is the most tenacious trait in humanity. History teaches but it has no pupils.

– Antonio Gramsci

Two millenia ago, the emperors of the Chin dynasty developed the earliest known type of crowd control. An especially hated minister of the government would periodically be thrown to the mob and ripped to pieces, thereby satiating the restlessness and rage of the people while keeping Imperial power safely intact.

This system was later perfected into something we call voting.

I can’t say I was surprised yesterday when a majority Liberal government was appointed over the ashes of one of the most hated political regimes in Canadian history. That’s how the game works, after all: the old tag-team operation of manufactured change designed to convince the mob that it’s really achieved something by bringing in the new guy.

Like those similarly deposed rulers named “Pope” Benedict and President George Bush junior, Prime Minister Stephen Harper increasingly and expertly played his role of irredeemable villain in order to draw upon himself the hatred of a majority of the electorate, allowing his attractive, smiling Liberal replacement to be acclaimed and loved by the crowd simply for looking nicer. This kind of puppet show worked admirably for those other Villains’ appointed successors, President Obama and “Pope Francis”; and now it’s worked equally well for Justin Trudeau, that paltry reincarnation of his wife beating and child molesting father Pierre.

Meanwhile, the election game concluded, the Empire will carry on, for now: the mob “democratically” satiated, the Corporatocracy preserved.

Any Canadian who has the semblance of a political memory must find the entire thing more than repulsive, especially if we remember how the same apparent changing of the guard happened not so long ago after an equally despised Tory Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, saw his party wiped out and reduced to two seats in Parliament on the wave of the same kind of Liberal landslide. Then, after years of the same kind of mob-ruled corruption, the Tories under Stephen Harper took over again with the same promising of goodness.

And so on.

I’ve always hated ping pong. It seems so mindless and repetitive – just like Canadian voting patterns. Strait jacketed by a two party bi-polarism, Canadians exhibit the cyclical behavior pattern of an untreated manic depressive, feverishly handing total power first to one palliative and then to another, and never learning a thing in the process. The farce is almost like American politics, except it’s a hell of a lot more boring north of the border.

Like mashed potatoes without the gravy, to quote Canuckophobe Billy Bob Thornton.

I don’t imagine any of this reality will register with the smug electorate who think they did something on October 19, even when their momentarily shiny and new Prime Minister stands up in Parliament and with all the other neophyte Pigs at the Trough takes his oath of loyalty not to those who elected him or to a Constitution, but to a senile pederast in London. But surely it’s time for those of us who call ourselves awakened to do something more than gripe about the tragic-comedy called Canada, Ltd.

Blasted out of my own accommodation to Canadiana by what I discovered up close about the masses of little corpses upon which this nation is built, I have called for a Republic for years now: not as a nice idea but as a moral and lawful necessity. It’s not a new call: MacKenzie, Papineau, my ancestor Philip Annett and lots of other folks tried unsuccessfully to create such a Republic in arms in 1837. But history and our own recent efforts show us the truth that regardless of what opinion polls will tell you, Canadians aren’t ready for self-government – including the ones who say they are.

Simply put, they lack the courage.

I’ve met and worked with a lot of smart, militant and good-hearted Canadians over the decades, but I know very few courageous ones. Many of the paper members of our fledgling Republic of Kanata movement are experts in common law court procedure and how to wangle yourself out of paying personal income taxes. Some of them even tepidly challenge the system as one man shows and become internet celebrities. But the valor and the consistent will that breaks down every obstacle and forces a revolutionary movement into being is rarely to be found in Canada.

We can, and do, blame our upbringing for this, of course. Who of us in Canadian schools didn’t have pumped into our vulnerable little brains the recurring refrain that we are not free citizens, but “loyal subjects” of someone calling herself a Queen? The hilariously accurate scene from the comedy “Canadian Bacon”, in which every Canuck in a crowd keeps saying “Sorry!” to the rowdy American who keeps slamming into all of them, tells it all, in a way. Canadian “niceness” is in reality just veiled over cowardice.

During the critical years from 2005 to 2008 when a few of us forced our home grown Genocide into mainstream consciousness, I couldn’t find many other Canadians to occupy churches with us. It was mostly aboriginals who did so, and a host of them paid for their courage with their lives. White Canada hung back and watched our actions in trepidation – especially the “progressives”. Still to this day, the idea that we, the people, have the power to nullify criminal institutions, convene our own courts and take back our country is one that frightens most Canadians – including those in our Kanata network.

In that sense, it’s perhaps small wonder that the recent October 19 election witnessed one of the biggest voter turnouts in Canadian history, if you believe the corporate media. “Change” for Canadians still means timidly handing over their authority to somebody else – even to unaccountable servants of a foreign criminal power, and to the real rulers like Power Corporation and the Bronfman and Desmarais families.

Nevertheless, as Sun Tzu reminds us, change and uncertainty is the only constant in the universe. There is a new spirit in the land, even here in Canada: but it can only be detected close up.

So, in closing, some words from the wise: when you see that spirit becoming embodied and emerging in your own neighborhood – in closed down crown courts and reclaimed property, in the citizen arrests of child rapists and criminally convicted church and state officials, and even in new Peoples’ Assemblies of local self-governance – be sure not to act like a Canadian. Don’t draw the curtains, or run for help to see if it’s all “legal”. Instead, have the fortitude to forget who you think you are and stand with us, and risk everything for our one improbable chance at liberty.

Canadian Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau has confirmed he will withdraw Canadian fighter jets from the air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria.

He informed US President Barack Obama of his decision hours after leading his Liberal party to victory in the polls.

As part of his election campaign, Mr Trudeau pledged to bring home the CF-18 fighter jets that were deployed to the region until March 2016.

He has not yet given a timescale.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals swept to power in Monday election, ending nearly a decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper.

Mr Trudeau, an ex-high-school teacher, is the eldest son of late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Jets and refugees

In his first telephone conversation with the US president as Canada’s prime minister-designate, Mr Trudeau informed Barack Obama that he would make good on his election promise to withdraw the fighter jets.

“I committed that we would continue to engage in a responsible way that understands how important Canada has a role to play in the fight against ISIL (Islamic State), but he (Barack Obama) understands the commitments I’ve made around ending the combat mission,” he told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday.

However, he said he would keep Canadian military trainers in northern Iraq, the AFP news agency reports.

Mr Trudeau has also vowed to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year – a move previously rejected by his predecessor Stephen Harper, who took a much harder line on the issue.